Abstract
What is a just war?
By definition, a war is “using an arming force to resolve a situation of conflict between two or more organized communities: clans, factions, states. It is, for each of the opponents to force the other(s) to submit to his will “(Little Larousse's definition). Thus, one of the characteristic of the war is using an armed force, and so the violence. And when the force is used, there are inevitably collateral victims, either from the army or the civil population.
The main question is so to know in which cases the reason of the war can legitimate the death of the hurt of persons. If the war is engaged to end another conflict making more victims, it is easy to make a mathematic, utilitarian calculate to show that the war was a better answer that not doing anything. But when the reason of the war is an ideal (bring democracy, liberty…), the answer is more subjective: in which case an ideal can overpass human lives? The answer to these questions will of course depend on the definition we give of a “just” war.
